Mexican Crepes in Albania (5/15/17)

So this week was pretty good. It was a pretty quiet week I guess not really much that went on. So at the beginning of the week there was a new senior couple that came in.. They were really nice! They kind of seemed overwhelmed about coming into Albania but they were really cool. Ok so kind of a side note, as a missionary in Albania you kind of get accustom to strange things. So, there are these delicious "Mexican" flavored Crepes that they sell right below our house.. So I was talking about that with our mission president and the new senior couple steps in and says "A Mexican Crepe in Albania?! That sounds wrong." Ha so needless to say I was HAPPY to show them where the place was and to enjoy a crepe with them. I think it got their approval haha. They are SO GOOD. 

Shout out to my comp's girlfriend for getting me an Easter egg :) 

The rest of the week was kind of just boring. We were doing a lot of street contacting which was good. It is getting SO hot though! It is starting to get like California weather here hot and humid ha it is nice though. We have been trying to work hard here but the area is kind of slow right now. We have a few friends we are working with though which is good. I spent a really long time writing a bunch of life's questions and how the Book of Mormon can answer them and stuff and I filled up the front 2 blank pages of a Book of Mormon, and I was all excited to use it then I go up to this guy and invite him to read one of the scriptures that answers a question and he looks at it and says "You are wasting your time here, go back to America." And I was like.... great.... hahaha but it was actually pretty successful a lot of people thought that it was really cool! 

During the meet we met this member who is like really old but really funny hahaha and he was telling us how the Stake tried to give him a calling and he was like "Why would I take a calling? I am anti-communist and pro-America!" HAhahahaha I was dying so much ha he is such a funny guy he always talks about politics to us and we are just like "you know we can't talk about politics as missionaries right?" But he just likes talking to us haha. 

This kid is a stud!

We also had an activity this week where we were doing Albanian traditional line dancing it was loads of fun! I am getting SO GOOD at Albanian dancing like I can hit all of the steps. I am excited to get home and teach you all of it ;) 

So at the end of the week we looked at our numbers and they were... not so hot to say the least so we were like well lets just hope for a miracle on Sunday! And we definitely got one. Church was so great! We had this investigator come and bring his mom and she loved it and invited us to come to their house this week to teach their family! We also had some other random people come that we met while street contacting and we were able to invite them to meet with us so that was a really cool blessing of the Lord! 

Oh yeah and also I Skyped some people on Sunday night it was pretty good I guess. ;) 

Love you so much family you are the best!!!! 
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MUM! 

Elder Farnworth 

Cleaning, trainings, more cleaning..(5/8/17)

This week was pretty busy but really good! This is going to be a short email though because I am lazy haha sorry everyone. SO at the beginning of the week we gave a training for all of the missionaries that are in there trainee transfer. It was a really good training! We assigned all of the trainings to read some scriptures and then compare to their work and to answer the question "What does it mean to rely on the Lord?" It was a really good training! I love giving trainings it is always such a great Spirit. 

The after product!! 

Then we just street contacted a lot this week. We met with this dude who is hilarious!! He is like 57 years old and is just so funny. I refer to him as the "Albanian Han Solo" he is such a gangster! He like knows very little English and always looks angry and whenever you say something he like stares at you and is like "What?!" It is so funny. He always like sits at pubs and just drinks vodka all the time so it will be a working progress. But he has potential! At first he was kind of just like no no no no God and all this stuff but like the next lesson he opened up and was like "I only drink a lot because I am sad that I have to live far from my kids" And stuff then I testified that God still loves him even more than he loves his kids it was really cool. I love missionary work.  So at the end of the week we got the assignment to clean the office. MAN it was a pretty big task. It was so messy! I am talking about the storage room of the office ha there was so much crap there. It ended up taking us about 9 hours straight to get it all clean! It looks really good now though! It was pretty fun cleaning it but a lot of hard work and we were definitely not dressed in the proper outfits because we got our white shirts really dirty but it was great!
Then on Sunday we had one of our investigators that is really cool and we have been working with for a really long time but hasn't been to church, he came to church! It was cool... Kind of. He walks in and he yells "FARNY, MILLER WHATS UP!" In the middle of some lady giving her testimony then he like sees all the other missionaries around the room and he like yells their names and was like raising his hand to them and stuff it was so funny ha. Then he was like "Tonight, I am going to drink alcohol and do drugs, you guys in?" (side note- we have taught him the word of wisdom, he was just messing with us.. he is such a punk) It was funny then he like took the sacrament and was like "Alright I am out, love you Jesus!" then leaves haha. I love some of the experiences that I have here so much haha. 

Anyway love you all have a great week!! 

Elder Farnworth 

I made it to Bitola!! (5/1/17)

This week was really really great week! Really busy but really great! So the beginning of the week was kind of normal. Just some meetings and some contacting it was fun. CRAZY STORY (but before I tell you, don't worry, Albania is a really safe place.) Okay so we were contacting and I was talking to this dude and the street, meanwhile this like homeless man walks up to me and points to my watch then he holds up this weird things with wires and stuff and lights a lighter underneath it and my heart dropped. I thought it was a bomb! So I started like backing up really fast and yelling but then he just walked away and it was nothing. Then the person I was with was like "Don't worry, we don't have any terrorists in Albania, just crazy people." I was so scared! My life flashed before my eyes! (I lived a pretty good life, in case you were wondering) 

Also here are some random pictures of my shoes..
they are holding up like champs!

Final stretch 5 months left! 

Then we got the assignment to go to a city in Albania called Pogradec, to take some church photo's to their new church building down there. Then from Pogradec we went to do an exchange in a city in Macedonia called Ohrid! It was SO pretty there. There is like this lake there and it is gorgeous! I have been there a couple times before but the other times it has been snowy and dark there so this was the first time I have seen it during the spring and man was it pretty! But yeah it was fun to do an exchange there. I obviously don't speak any Macedonian at all but I was still trying to street contact and stuff it was so much fun! The missionaries there wrote down some phrases for me to say to people so I was just some weird American trying to speak Macedonian to people it was funny. 

But it was just really gorgeous there in Ohrid! There are a lot of tourists that go there because it is referred to by some as the "Jerusalem of Europe" because of how many church's there are and I guess the Apostle Paul went there once or something like that. But it was really cool! Oh yeah and I helped out with a lesson there and this guy totally lived in America for a super long time and said that he was pretty positive that he has seen missionaries before when we lived in Chicago.. So I asked him when he lived in Chicago and he said from 1978-1990 and I was like dude I bet he saw my dad as a missionary in Chicago... Just saying. But anyway Ohrid was just awesome... I highly recommend going there. I mean, it was marked as that 5'th best city in the world to visit on https://www.lonelyplanet.com/best-in-travel/cities... ;) 

Ohrid, Macedonia! Excited to take you all here family!!! 

This is Bitola

So then the second day we were in Macedonia we drove to this city called Bitola! It is this city at the bottom of Macedonia that is like 5 minutes away from Athens Greece. There aren't any missionaries serving there right now but we are looking to sending some missionaries there soon! So we will see! It was pretty cool though because we were able to work there for a few hours, making us some of the first missionaries to ever do missionary work there. It was pretty cool. Anyway that was pretty much my week. We always played soccer on Saturday it was loads of fun but at one point I got knocked over and landed on my tailbone super hard it hurt way bad!! Ha but we are good. I am loving it here so much! Thank you all for your love and support! 

Have a great week! 

Elder Farnworth